The Gaylord Opryland Experience

When I was in the fourth grade my Grandma and Aunt took me out of school for a week (unheard of!) for a girls' trip to Nashville. I remember that I had a good time but I don't really remember any of the specifics of the trip or our itinerary. Except The Opryland Hotel. I remember every moment of walking through that big, grand hotel. It was so much bigger and more beautiful than the hotel we were actually staying in. Grander than any place I had ever visited. The gardens were breathtaking. Even the restrooms were impressive. I loved everything about it. In the two decades since I fell in love with the hotel, I have remembered it fondly and dreamed of actually staying there someday.

You can see how my big expectations may have set me up for a fall...

In case you're not up on the Opryland, it is extravagantly expensive. It was a big deal for us to splurge on it. And obviously I had built it up pretty high in my mind. And I looked forward to it for WEEKS.  We showed up at Christmas time where they do it up right.  Perfect for me because I love all things Christmas.  Except, as we found out later, the Opryland takes in 10,000 visitors a day during Christmas...which translated to us sitting in traffic for over an hour just waiting to check in.  And sitting in traffic over an hour everytime we returned to the hotel.  If we ever stay again, it will NOT be at Christmas time!

True to my memory, it was still extravagantly beautiful.

The atriums were just as beautiful as I remembered.  They were huge and there were so many!  They had them all done up for Christmas and there were several huge Christmas trees.

 There were over a million Christmas lights outside, and many of them just happened to be right outside the window of our room so I could look at them anytime from the warmth of my hotel room.  They were, of course, gorgeous too.

I wanted to know if there was some trick to getting the entire tree all lit up like that, so I practically climbed inside one to get a picture:

Now I've shared all the things I loved, let's talk things I didn't.  Namely, our hotel room itself.  Everything in the lobbies and atriums and outside the hotel were wonderful.  Our room was like a Motel 6!  The exterior door didn't seal all the way, so it let in cold air and noise all night long.  Because we were by the Christmas lights, there were tour buses dropping people off every 10 minutes until about 4 AM every night and we could hear the engines and the people talking like we were part of the crowd.

It was freezing in that room!  There were other problems that I could have lived with, but certainly didn't expect: the wallpaper peeling in the bathroom, the carpet not quite meeting the wall.  I expected higher quality rooms, but instead the room quality was really shabby.  I think I would have been disappointed, but not angry...if only I wasn't freezing and being woken up every 10 minutes! 

We called down Saturday morning to complain about the temperature and noise level.  I was expecting that they would offer to move us to a floor off ground level, or at the very least apologize for our troubles.  Instead we were told, "Well, complain to someone when you check out tomorrow."  What?!?! 

Summary: the service is less than you would expect, the rooms are way less than you would expect.  The Opryland Hotel is a great place to visit, but you may want to find somewhere else to stay.